Ever wondered what’s lurking in your garden?
A friend of mine has a budding1 professional interest. She’s a volunteer in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and as part of her role has come across an activity known as nature mapping2.
As far as I understand it, the ultimate goal of nature mapping – also called barefoot mapping – is to catalogue the hidden biodiversity tucked away in parks and gardens. My friend has partnered with an amateur artist, and they are potentially interested in mapping private residences and producing personalised works of art, complete with information about the property’s ownership, location, physical description, ecological and cultural values, stewardship and conservation goals, etc.
Everyone needs to practice their trade, and what better way than in your friends’ gardens? So, one sunny summer day, she arrived at my house with notebook, camera and measuring tape in hand, and we proceeded to measure dimensions and sketch outlines and move inch by inch through the garden, listing and photographing every living thing we found. The results are below the fold; I’ll be forwarding this link to my friend, who is brand new to the blogosphere, so please give her a gentle introduction3 to our little corner of the internet!
Link if you’d like to zoom in
Pretty cool, eh?!
I had a really fun few hours poking through hedges and into the weedier parts of our property. It took me back to the days of picking up worms and chasing my sister around our garden with them, all those weeks years ago. And the original hand drawn map – all 2 ft x 4 ft of it – will find a good home on my office wall.
Our next step is to map my mother-in-law’s property on the Sunshine Coast. It’s about half an acre and incorporates an intricately planned patchwork of flowers and herbs, bordered by chunks of the original forest. We regularly see deer passing through, an owl with a four-foot wing span used to stop by to terrorise the cat, the occasional bear has been sighted, and my father-in-law once saw a cougar strolling past the kitchen window. I can’t wait to see that map!
fn1.Pun intended
fn2.Hands up anyone who thought from the title that I’d invented another Nature journal in which to publish my extremely dubious scientific findings?
fn3.We’re aware of the typos, thank you, Richard! This is only version 1.
Cath, this is brilliant. It really points out that science isn’t only in labs and ecology doesn’t only happen in exotic foreign countries but right outside your doorstep (although from my desk in Cambridgeshire, Stanley Park IS and exotic location). I might try to engage the smaller members of my clan in this for our garden or at least part of it. If I do we’ll post the result here I promise.
It reminds me a little of International Rock Flipping Day which was 2nd September. My friend Bora had great fun finding things under rocks in 2007, though less so in 2008.
Perhaps we should instigate an International Nature Mapping Day, if one doesn’t exist already.
Image curtesy of digitalfrontiersmedia
Thanks Chris! This would be an excellent activity for kids. I’m hoping to involve at least one of my nephews in the Sunshine Coast effort, but it’s been a few years since we went rock flipping and bug hunting together in that same garden, and I’m not sure if he’ll still be interested.